


icon of the theotokos

by dickviolin



Category: Tennis RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - 1980s, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Blasphemy, Cold War, Consensual Underage Sex, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Oral Sex, Religion Kink, Set in Russia, but also very tender, like if mitski made a song with usher ygm, teenagers in love, using things that shouldn't be used as lube as lube, very dirty!!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-22
Updated: 2019-11-22
Packaged: 2021-02-25 20:43:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21526459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dickviolin/pseuds/dickviolin
Summary: blanket disclaimer for works containing sascha zverev. see notes for more detailsThen I, too, knelt before that acolyte.Above the crucifix I bent my headThe Christ was thin, and cold, and very dead:And yet I bowed, yea, kissed - my lips did cling.(I kissed the warm live hand that held the thing.)- wilfred owentwitter: @liamseoirse
Relationships: Stefanos Tsitsipas/Alexander Zverev
Comments: 16
Kudos: 38





	icon of the theotokos

**Author's Note:**

> hi,
> 
> as you are probably aware if you pay attention to tennis, olya sharapova, sascha's ex-girlfriend, has made credible accusations of domestic violence against him (including screenshots and multiple witnesses backing up her testimony). if you are likely to be triggered by things like that, i would not recommend reading her instagram posts/interviews with her; the details she has given are graphic, shocking and utterly sickening. 
> 
> i'm not going to take any of my fics containing sascha down. i don't want to pretend that i didn't support him for eighteen months before all this came out. i don't want to pretend that we weren't all duped. i want these works to exist as a record of the dangers of thinking you know anything about someone in the public eye. if we write fiction about people, we're actually just writing about characters loosely based on what people allow us to know about themselves. 
> 
> however, i don't feel comfortable writing any more fic about sascha. i don't want to receive kudos for this- please don't leave them- and i will delete comments if and when they are left. please respect that, and please don't read this fic. 
> 
> believe women. exercise caution. be good to yourselves and others. we are all fighting invisible battles. 
> 
> ~dickviolin

_Lord, have mercy. Lord, have mercy. Lord, have mercy_.

Except when you say it so many times in a row under your breath, it all gets rushed together: _lordhavemercylordhavemercylordhavemercy_. Over and over, until you think your tongue might fall out of your mouth. Over and over, until you can push every other thought out of your mind. Over and over, from when you see him for the first time to when he finally leaves.

Stefanos always finds Sascha’s eyes, even if he’s right at the back of the church where the icon stands and the nursing mothers are, and Stefanos is right at the front, holding a candle or a thurible. He can’t help it. They’re shining beacons in the gloom of early-morning services. The sun doesn’t rise until ten, not this far north, not this late in the year, and liturgy starts at eight, still in the dark. The congregation kick the snow off their boots at the door. They hang their coats up in the cloakroom. Sascha is always late. His mother and father, his brother and his brother’s wife and their son, _they’re_ always on time, but for some reason Sascha always stumbles in at least ten minutes after the service starts, and so hangs at the back. Waiting. Waiting for Stef to find him.

They arrived in the village at about the same time, when Stef was ten and Sascha was eleven. Stef was alone- as usual- in the schoolyard, hanging about by a wall, imploring the dinner lady with his eyes to make sure the bigger boys didn’t kick their football at him. Then a mop of blond hair marched up to him.

“I’m new,” he’d said. “They say you’re new, too.”

Stef bit his lip and scuffed the ground with his foot.

“I’m Alexander.” Stef risked another glance up and saw that he was all limbs, long, skinny, pale. “People call me Sascha.” Sascha stuck his hands in the pockets of his jacket. It looked new. It looked nice. It looked warm. “Can you speak Russian?”

“Yeah,” Stef finally said. “I speak Russian.” He felt indignant, that was why. This- this _Sascha_ was chirping away in his ridiculous accent, and he had the nerve to ask _him_ if he spoke Russian.

“Right. Cos you weren’t saying anything.”

Stef shrugged and looked down again. The boy’s eyes were bright blue. Like the sky. But clearer. The sky over home, maybe, not the sky here.

“What’s your name, then?” Sascha insisted.

“Stefanos.”

“Stepan?”

“_Stefanos_,” he’d snapped, even more indignant now. “Not Stepan.”

“OK. Sorry. I just-”

“It’s Greek.”

“Oh.”

“That’s where I come from. Greece.”

Sascha said nothing for a moment, then, “Your Russian is good. For a Greek.”

Stef scowled up at him. “I’ve been speaking Russian all my life. My mother-”

“Both my parents are Russian,” Sascha interrupted. “I’ve been speaking it my whole life too.”

“You have a funny voice.”

Sascha’s turn to scowl. “No I don’t.”

“Yes you do. Your ‘r’s sound weird.”

“I’m from Germany,” Sascha said, tossing his head. “Maybe I have a slight German accent.”

“_Slight_,” Stefanos said under his breath, and the blow to his shoulder took him by surprise. It didn’t hurt. It wasn’t meant to. Stefanos had never been punched without someone meaning to hurt him.

“_Mudak_,” Sascha said. _Shithead_. But there was the twinkle of a smile in the corner of his eyes and he was laughing as he spoke.

Six years on, now. Six years and a few months, because that had been September, and now the lamps were lit and the branches on the trees were bare, and there is a big, round fir tree in Stefanos’ sitting room. He’s sixteen, but he was still as excited as his siblings to decorate it. He was pleased, to the point of blushing beetroot and grinning like a fool, to be given the honour of lifting Elisavet onto his shoulders so she could put the angel on top.

Six years on, it is Christmas, they are in church, and Stefanos is panicking.

Panicking because that gangly German boy who wormed his way into his lonely little life six years ago is staring at him. Through the light of the flickering flames Stef can see him. See what his face is saying.

_Lord, have mercy_.

What he will whisper in Stef’s ear at communion.

_Lord, have mercy_.

What he will come to do once the service is over.

_Lord, have mercy_.

“Stepan- Stepan, ah, Sissy-pass?”

“Stef-” he began to correct Miss Koskova but another voice drowned him out.

“Stef-_ah_-nos Tsi-tsi-pas, miss, he’s Greek.” Sascha’s voice carried all the way across the classroom. _Zverev_ and _Tsitsipas_ were nowhere near each other in the register, so Stef was in the middle, surrounded by older boys, while Sascha was right at the back in the corner, which was just how he liked it.

It was the first day of a new school year, which meant a repeat of the rigmarole he’d long since got used to, of explaining that _no_, it’s not Stepan, no, you can’t just call me Stepan because you want to, here’s how to spell it in Russian, my mama showed me.

Anyway. That tall German boy, who seemed to both like him and find him very odd, was stepping in this time, which he appreciated, but-

“You pronounced it wrong.” Sascha took a bite out of an enormous red apple as they wandered across the schoolyard. They had ten minutes of break before they had to go back in and do more sums or learn more about the English civil war or something as boring as that. They stood by the girls’ playground and watched them play skipping games. Stef always wanted to tell Sascha that he wanted to join in with them, jump in and out of the rope when they called his birth month, but saying he wanted to play with girls was tantamount to saying you wanted to _be_ a girl.

“Huh?” Sascha said. He was twelve and Stef was eleven and that was very, very grown up.

“You pronounced it wrong. My name. It’s not Stef-_ah_-nos, it’s _Stef-_uh-nos.”

“Oh. Sorry. That’s how we pronounce it in Russian.”

Stef whipped his head round to swear at him- call him _malaka_, maybe, swearing in Greek seemed cool- but there was that look in his eyes again, and the huff of a laugh.

“Thanks for telling her, though.”

Sascha shrugged, which was also very cool. Acting like you didn’t care. Stef wished he could care less. Wished he didn’t think about every single thing over and over. Wished he didn’t feel the need to say his prayers twice, three times, four times, to make sure God heard him. Because, he was beginning to suspect, there was something fundamentally wrong with him. Something he couldn’t put his finger on- and therefore confess to Fr Igor- but _something_.

There didn’t seem to be anything wrong with Sascha, though, so Stef clung close to him and hoped some of his insouciance would rub off.

Bright blue eyes at the other end of the church. It was a huge building, with a towering roof, stained glass that in the summer poured in coloured light. But it was dark, now. Dark enough that if Stef wanted to look, the congregation might not notice.

Stef didn’t want to look, of course. He was good. He wasn’t a sinner. He wasn’t going to- not on Christmas day.

“Father.”

He was fifteen, and shaking all over, like a horse when it knows it’s about to be shot. Stefanos had seen lots of horses being shot. He threw up every time.

Fr Igor was in the vestry after the liturgy, tidying away his papers, reshelving his books. Fr Igor was portly and generous and smiley, and his son, Grisha, was the best footballer in school.

“Father,” Stef said again, a little louder. Fr Igor had finally turned round with a beam.

“Stefanos!” He even pronounced it right, which made Stef feel important, somehow. Or at least like _someone_ was listening to him. Sascha finally had it right, after all these years. Not that he was thinking about Sascha.

“Can I talk to you, father?”

“Of course, boy. Take a seat.”

Fr Igor carried on tidying up as Stef spoke, as he tried to explain what was going on, how for years now he’d felt like there was something in him that didn’t work properly. How he didn’t know what it was, couldn’t put a name to it, but he _knew_, he just _knew_, he was going to hell. Fr Igor said nothing for a long time then finally sat opposite Stef and fixed him with a paternal sort of stare.

“Are you saying your prayers?”

Stef blinked. “Yes.”

“And you’re paying attention in school? Doing your homework?”

“Yes.”

“Helping your mother around the house, with the kids?”

“Yes.”

“Not drinking? Not smoking? Not having sex?”

Stef recoiled in horror. “No, father, no, not at all.”

Fr Igor clapped his knees. “You’re fine, Stefanos. You’re young, you think too much. It’s quite normal to be confused at your age.”

Stef tucked a loose strand of his hair behind his ear and frowned when it immediately fell forward.

“I’m not going to hell?”

“No more than anyone else.”

“Oh.” He felt a little disappointed, for some reason, that there wasn’t anything Fr Igor could diagnose. He’d heard of people getting exorcisms. Casting out demons. It sounded like what he needed.

“I tell you what. We need a new altar server, now Vova Bolshov’s gone to Moscow for university. Why don’t you do that, hm? Perhaps serving on the altar will help you in your spiritual journey.”

Stefanos was so touched he could barely get his _yes, thank you_ out. Fr Igor invited him to come back the next day to try on Vova’s old cassock (“You’re both big long drinks of water, the pair of you, his stuff should fit.”), and learn all the routines- censing the altar, lighting the candles, processing with the gospel book. He’d taken to it like a duck to water, and for ages he couldn’t help but beam with pride whenever his parents caught his eye, standing right at the front with the kids.

Two months later, Stef lost his virginity.

He only had one job extra, that morning, which was to hold the little crucifix out for the congregation to kiss. He had been thinking about it for two weeks, since Fr Igor told him. About the people, kneeling down in front of him. Kissing their Beloved. About Sascha kneeling down in front of him. Kissing his beloved.

The liturgy dragged on especially long that morning. Perhaps because it was so cold, and even in his cassock and cloak, Stef was shivering. Finally came time for communion. Stef held out the basket of antidoron, the bread that hadn’t been consecrated, for the people to take after the gifts. He watched out of the corner of his eye as Sascha dropped to his knees in front of Fr Igor and the deacon, then got back up, approached.

He felt the basket move in his hands as Sascha went in for a corner of bread, and the hot tickle of his breath on Stef’s neck.

“See you later,” he said, and Stef shivered again, but this time not from the cold.

Sascha was Bad, capital ‘b’. Sascha was the sort of boy you did well to stay away from. Sascha threw paper across the schoolroom when the teacher’s back was turned, which was one thing, but Sascha also drank a lot and would steal his dad’s car and go joyriding round the twisty dark roads that led out of the village and down the valley, and that was quite another.

“Can’t you keep that boy under control?” people would ask his papa the next morning, glaring at Sascha stumbling to school with a thick head and a red mark where he’d got the back of his mother’s hand across his cheek. Stefanos felt bad for Alexander Sr., who’d done so well with Mischa, getting him married to a nice girl from the village once he’d come back from St Petersburg with his medical degree. He would just shake his head and curse after his son, but there wasn’t much he could do about it.

He would drive up to Stef’s house, which was right on the outskirts of the village, and throw pebbles at his bedroom window until he stuck his head out.

“What?”

“Come with.”

“It’s late. We have school tomorrow.”

“Fuck school,” Sascha would cry, head tipped back, pale throat exposed. And Stef would pull his shoes on and get a scarf and hop out, if only because Sascha would wake his parents, yelling like that.

“C’mon,” Sascha would say. There would be a bottle of vodka wedged next to the gearstick and the radio would be tuned to some pirate station that got German pop music.

“_Neunundneunzig Luftballons_,” Sascha would yell along at the top of his voice at the signal dropped in and out. He didn’t seem to care that he couldn’t sing. The papers and the radio talked about revolution. It didn’t seem likely where they were, any time soon.

Stef would come with him, he told himself, because someone had to, someone had to make sure Sascha didn’t crash the car and wrap himself round a tree. If he found himself singing along to the radio (quietly, so Sascha couldn’t hear that he was rubbish), that was just him getting caught up in the moment.

It began like that. The usual way, the pebbles on the window, the half-hearted argument. But when he got in the passenger seat, there was no vodka, and Sascha didn’t smell drunk. And they went the other way, back through the village. Up the valley, up and up, so Stef almost got dizzy. No radio, either. Sascha didn’t say anything at all. Stef didn’t either. Finally, they stopped. Right at the top. The top of the world, it felt like. Sascha pulled the keys out the ignition and sat back.

“You ready?” he said, finally.

“For what?”

Sascha grinned and opened the door, and Stef followed him out. And it was freezing cold and the grass was still muddy from the rain that morning, but still, Sascha took him by the hand and they leaned against the bonnet of the car. Sascha lit a cigarette in silence and took a great long drag, then said, “Look up.”

“What?” Stef said, and cursed himself for his ineloquence.

“Look up. At the sky, dummy.”

So Stef did, and the carpet of stars laid itself out for them both.

“Look at them,” Sascha said. “All of them. They’re all for us, Stefanos. Just us. Every single star in that sky was made for us.”

Stef looked for a long time, and thought about saying something like, how could anyone feel worried about wars and governments and walls when we all look at the same beautiful sky, why bother with fighting, why even bother going to school tomorrow. But he didn’t. The words weren’t there. He finally looked down at Sascha and Sascha was looking at him, and he realised Sascha had been staring at him the entire time.

“Oh,” he said, and it was sunrise on his face. Sascha brushed his lips against Stef’s and paused, a terrifying split second, before he ran his hand under his chin to pull him in and kiss him. Every star in the sky was shining and singing for them. When Sascha opened his mouth and pulled him in by the waist, it felt like a million million meteor storms. They kissed like that, slow and glorious, for a long time, until Stef finally pulled away.

“It’s wrong,” he said. Breathed.

Sascha blinked and smiled. “Must be wrong, huh? It feels too good.” He ran his fingertips through Stef’s curls, tucked them behind his ear. They didn’t fall forward this time. “It’s not wrong, Stefanos. It’s not. Look at the stars.”

Stef looked up again, and they were still there, twinkling. The heavens hadn’t fallen in.

“The stars don’t care. I don’t care. I just want you.”

Stef leaned in again, kissed him, felt the electricity. The stars don’t care. The stars don’t care.

When they drove home, Sascha pulled up outside his house and kissed him once more, in the stale darkness of the car.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he whispered.

That was three months ago. The heavens are still yet to fall in. Stefanos is still alive, despite everything that has passed- everything he’s _done_\- in the meantime. He wonders how. _Lord, have mercy_. Perhaps Sascha’s right, perhaps it isn’t wrong. It doesn’t feel wrong. Sascha touching him, his lips on his. It feels like-

The first people are approaching, now. First they kneel to kiss the heavy silver ring on Fr Igor’s right hand, to mutter _Father, bless_, and then they come to kneel in front of Stefanos. He is carrying the crucifix, and though it’s only five inches long it weighs heavy in his hand. They drop to their knees before him and kiss the cross, then stand and move on. If he stares down at his feet, where the floor is swimming, he can pretend Sascha isn’t somewhere in the line. He can pretend, for a moment, that he isn’t damned.

“Father, bless.” Sascha’s voice is low and rough. It always is in the morning. Stef curses the knowledge. Curses the mornings- few and far between- he has woken up in Sascha’s bed and heard his sleepy dawn voice. He risks a glance and Sascha is getting up from his knees, only to take two long steps forward and drop back down. He’s right in front of Stef. Chin tipped up. A line of bruises on his neck- and Stef knows how they hurt, because he’s the one who left them. Sascha opens his mouth just a little. Like he might be about to say something. Instead, he reaches up to cup Stef’s hands in his. With the softest of touches of his lips, Sascha kisses Stef’s knuckles, not the cross they are wrapped around. Then he stands up and walks away without a glance back.

They’d been hesitant at first. Kissing in Sascha’s dad’s car. Kissing in the woods behind school. Kissing hard and fast and desperate and tense against the wall of the church.

The first time had been in the vestry. Everyone had gone and Stef was alone, perched on the piano stool in his scuffed trainers and worn-out old jeans.

He hadn’t heard Sascha come in.

“You not going home?”

Stef jumped about a foot in the air and his skin felt hot and cold all over. Normally Sascha would have made a joke, but that day there was something new in his eyes.

“I stay behind. After liturgy. Tidy up. It saves Fr Igor the job.”

Sascha stood at the door to the vestry. His jacket was gone and his tie was loosened, his top shirt button undone, the tails sticking out of his Sunday best trousers.

“You don’t seem to be doing much tidying.”

Stef tried in vain to find the words to explain. Explain that he came in here because with the kids at home it was the only quiet place he knew to think. Explain that he was trying to come up with something to say at confession. To come up with the courage to go to confession. But he couldn’t, all of sudden, find it in him to care about any of that. Because Sascha was crossing the room and sitting down beside him. The piano bench was only made for one and they were squashed up together. Sascha draped a leg over Stef’s and kissed him, hard and searching on the mouth, and then along his chin and down his neck and then pulled back.

“Can I touch you?” His eyes wide, nervous. Stef met them and blinked.

“Touch me?” He was confused. They were touching _now_, Sascha’s whole body pressed against Stef’s, his hands twisted in his hair.

“Like you touch yourself,” Sascha said. “Make you feel good.”

Stef shivered. “I don’t- I’ve never.”

Sascha withdrew. “You’ve never touched yourself?”

Stef shook his head. “It’s a sin.”

“_Liebchen_.” Sascha’s eyes were soft and open. “It’s not, I promise. There’s nothing wrong with it.”

Stefanos got the _idea_, of course, he’d seen the older boys at school miming it to each other, to the girls. And on a fairly regular basis since he was thirteen he would wake up feeling gross and cold, and put his hands down to feel where the front of his pyjama bottoms were damp and sticky. But he’d never. Not even when he was hard, not even when he’d wanted to, not even after Sascha had pressed him against a tree for minutes on end and kissed him like his life depended on it. It was a sin. That was that.

“_Solnyshko_.” Sunshine. “I promise. Let me?” Sascha extended his hand in question and Stef nodded, and then that hand was running over the crotch of his jeans, and then the zip was coming down and then-

The cross is cold metal, dead dull silver and wood. Stef kisses it and it chills his lips. There is no life there, eternal or otherwise. He replaces it on its shelf in the vestry and presses his head against the oak doors of the cupboard.

“You should go home, boy,” Fr Igor claps him on the shoulder. His voice booms in an imposing, impressive way during liturgy. Afterwards, in the vestry, it fills Stef’s whole head up and makes him want to put his hands over his ears.

“It’s OK, Father. I’ll stay behind. I’ll-”

“Stefanos, it’s Christmas.” Stefanos turns round and sees Fr Igor looking at him with concern.

“I promise, Father.” _I promise, solnyshko_. “I’ll just dust a bit and then I’ll go home.”

Fr Igor looks at him doubtfully but he has already hung up his vestments and put on his coat, and Stef knows Grisha’s been outside warming the car up for twenty minutes now.

“Don’t stay too long, boy. Christmas is for being with the people we love, hm?”

He bangs the door shut behind him but once the walls and fabric of the vestments have absorbed the sound, all is quiet in vestry. Just the dusty, sonorous tick of the Swiss cuckoo clock on the wall, and of Stef’s own breathing. It is 10:30. Sascha won’t be long.

Sascha was so gentle the first time. Stef didn’t know he had it in him. He once lobbed a whole chair out of the schoolroom window and jumped out of the hole it made, and his mama had had to go to the school, watched by every one of the parents and children, to beg Mr Kovalenko, the headmaster, to let him come back. There was a violence in him, then, that scared Stef. But on the creaky single bed he had in his tiny little box room in his parents’ house, Sascha was tenderness itself. He’d used the olive oil his mother had in the cupboard to ease the way, working his fingers into Stef so, so slowly, watching with concern for every frown and uncomfortable little yelp, holding Stef by the hips with one hand where Stef straddled him.

“Shh, liebling,” he’d whispered. “Just relax.” And he’d kissed Stef’s forehead to smooth out the lines that formed there. And then he’d found his mark, and Stef’s eyes had snapped open.

“Tell me about Greece,” Sascha said after. They were entwined under the covers. Stef could feel Sascha’s nose buried in his hair.

“It’s beautiful.” Stef conjured up images from his childhood. “Warm. Always warm and sunny. And the people are so kind. Kinder than here. Here, people don’t talk to you. In Greece, everyone says hello to everyone else. And the mountains are all around. It’s like history is speaking to you.”

“You miss it,” Sascha observed.

“At night, I play all my memories back, like a movie. So I’ll never forget. Is that weird?”

“No,” Sascha said. “We’ll go, one day. When we’re free, hm?”

_We_. Stef said nothing in response, just pulled him tighter. Hoped that would express the glow in his chest.

“Tell me about Germany.”

“It’s cold,” Sascha chuckled. “Not cold like here, though. Um. There are parks everywhere, and me and Mischa would go rollerskating in the streets. It was nice, in the West. Papa had a lot of books and Mischa worked at the record shop when he was in high school. And then we had to move here. Leave it all behind.”

“Yeah,” Stef said. “On the radio, they say-”

“Yeah. I don’t believe them.”

“We’ll go, one day,” Stef repeated. “When we’re free. You and me.”

“You and me.”

They couldn’t afford to fall asleep and get caught but there was a long, golden moment where Sasch was running his fingers through Stef’s hair, and it was a foretaste of what they might one day have.

Sascha comes in quietly. Stef told him, once, off-hand, that slamming doors made him tense up and want to cry. He’d thought Sascha would make fun of him, but he didn’t, just nodded and kissed his cheek, and since then, he’d made an effort to shut doors with a click.

“Hey,” he says. He’s wearing a jumper but he pulls it off and puts it on the radiator. Underneath, his school shirt, top button undone, tie nowhere to be seen.

Stef says nothing. Just sits and waits. Follows Sascha round the room with his eyes.

“I got some great presents. Misch went to Moscow in November and he brought me back a load of records. Nena’s new LP, and some Elvis Costello seven-inches. You should come round, listen to them. Have you been home yet?”

Stef shakes his head.

“What did you get the kids?”

Stef shoves his hands in between his knees. “I got Petros a tennis racquet. A new one, I mean. I think he’s tired of using my old one. And I got Pavlos a book about wolves. Um. And Elisavet, I got her some pencils. She likes to draw.”

“You’re a good brother.” Sascha looks down at him, beaming. “C’mere, _liebling_.” He leans down and kisses Stef softly on the lips. His face is cold and he tastes of cigarettes, so he probably sneaked out for a smoke after communion. It’s intoxicating.

“You kissed my hands,” Stef whispers. “Not the crucifix. My hands.”

“I believe in this knuckle alone,” Sascha takes Stef’s right hand and kisses the sharp joint below Stef’s index finger to illustrate, “More than I believe in any of what they say at liturgy.”

“That’s blasphemy,” Stef whispers.

“No, _solnyshko_, this is.”

He kisses Stef again, open mouthed, wet, filthy. Stef can hear it, breaking the silence, disturbing the dust. Cold fingertips run under his shirt and then Sascha lifts it over his head, follows it with his own, so they’re both shirtless, top halves abandoned in a pile to one side.

Sascha has a crucifix around his neck. Stirling silver. “It was Mischa’s,” he said once, breathing hard and long, naked in the back of his dad’s car. “He gave it to me when he went to St Petersburg.”

It hangs loose in front of him now as he leans down to kiss Stefanos. Stef pulls back, catches Sascha’s eye, doesn’t drop the eye contact as he pulls the pendant into his mouth. Sascha’s eyes are blown wide and dark, pupils dilated.

“_Fuck_, Stefanos, you’re going to ruin me like that.”

“We’re already ruined,” Stef says, letting it go. Sascha groans and goes in for his neck, down his shoulders, leaving a trail of kisses down his front, following the happy trail to the zipper on his jeans.

“Let me kneel for you,” he says, and drops, dutifully, not for the first time, and _God, please, Lord, have mercy_, not the last. “Pray for our souls, my darling.”

“Holy God, holy Mighty, holy Immortal, have mercy on us.”

Sascha pulls Stef’s cock from its confines and strokes it gently to full hardness.

“Holy God, holy Mighty, holy Immortal, have mercy on us.”

He drops the lightest of kisses to the head, and a bead of precum forms there immediately. Stef watches as he laps it up, shivers from the bottom of his spine from the sensation.

“Holy God, holy Mighty, holy- ahh-ah, _fuck_-” Sasch swallows him whole, right to the back of his throat, and begins to work up and down in earnest, coating him from base to tip and swirling his tongue round and round.

“Sascha, fuck-”

Sascha’s mouth pops off with a sinful little sound. He looks up, eyes heavy-lidded.

“Keep praying, _liebling_. We’re still in mortal danger.”

“Heavenly king, Comforter, the Spirit of Truth-” Sascha goes back down again, and it’s warm and soft and sosososo good. “Present in all places and filling all things-” On the top of his breath, now, voice wavering. “Treasury of goodness and giver of life- ah- abide in us…” He is cut off by his own moaning as Sascha reaches behind his balls to press two fingers to the spot there. He arches his back, concave against the piano, spine pressed right up against it.

“Keep going, baby, you weren’t done.” Sascha barely moves off to speak. Stef can feel his hot breath against the head and huffs out the rest of the air in his lungs.

“Fuck, ah- abide in us, cleanse us from every- every- st…stain…”

“Stain of sin,” Sascha prompts.

“Sascha, please,” Stef can hear himself, the wantonness in his voice. “Please, _fuck_, I won’t-”

“Please what?” Soft, lazy strokes up and down, Stef’s cock now coated in spit and precum. “Tell me what you want, _lapochka_.”

_Cleanse us from every stain of sin_. “Sascha, ah- please, please, fuck me.”

To which Sascha gives a low growl, _rrrrr_ at the back of his throat. He stands up.

“There’s-”

“Oil, in the cupboard.” Stef points over Sascha’s shoulder. It’s the chrism. There will be, Stefanos doesn’t doubt, the paintbrush Fr Igor uses, when they mark and chrismate newborns at their baptisms. To claim them for Christ. Stef wishes he could care, wishes his cock wasn’t hard and blurting precum, wishes he wasn’t lost in devotion, aching with want. Sascha crosses the room and Stef follows him with his gaze. Worshipping.

“Here, _kotik_.” _Kitty_. Stef shivers. “Gonna make it so good for you. Get up. Strip for me.”

Stef stands and fixes Sascha with his gaze as he pulls the last of his clothes off. Plausible deniability, if someone were to burst in, has disappeared. Sascha pauses on his way to run his hand up and down Stef’s front.

“This body,” he murmurs. “I love it. People wouldn’t think you’re this fit, huh?” His hand closes around Stef’s bicep. “Or that your hair would be that dark.” It inches down his stomach where a trail of brown hair points down like an arrow to his cock.

“Sascha, please.”

“Stefanos,” three syllables, precise and soft, three kisses to his neck. Sascha sits on the piano bench and beckons him over. “Come here.”

Stef comes to straddle him. He laces his arms around his neck and Sascha holds him by the waist, his two big hands almost meeting in the middle. Sascha takes the bottle of chrism and pours it out onto his fingers.

“Are you ready, _liebling_?” Stef nods and Sascha’s hand circles down his spine to slide up against his hole, to press just a little. Stef hisses.

“Please,” he says, and it almost comes out as a sob.

Sascha pushes his finger in and Stef gives a gasping little sigh. He opens his eyes to nod at Sascha and he feels him begin to move, a come-hither motion to hit the spot.

“Fuck, fuck, please, _malaka_, fuck,” he says into Sascha’s neck. He leans right in and lets Sascha’s soft hair tickle his cheek. Sascha continues like that for a long while, painfully slow, before finally stilling.

“More, baby?” he whispers.

“More, please, God, yes, please.” Stefanos knows he’s barely coherent but his skin is on fire and he feels pleasure in the pit of his stomach like nothing else on heaven or earth.

Sascha withdraws his hand just briefly to pour more oil onto it, but Stef still whines and buries his head into Sascha’s shoulder.

“So _needy_,” Sascha curses. “You really know how to flatter a guy, huh?” He presses two fingers in and begins to scissor them.

“Please,” Stefanos gasps. His voice is high and faint. “Please, I need…”

“Need what?” Sascha doesn’t halt his ministrations as he speaks, just carries on working him open, patient.

“Please,” Stef repeats. “Please, Sascha.”

“Tell me.”

Stef gasps into Sascha’s neck as he curls his fingers and reaches that spot. Lights dance behind his eyelids.

“Need- ah, Sascha, please, need you inside me, need your cock, _please_.” He’s almost sobbing. The desperation is white hot in his stomach.

“Well, since you asked so nicely.” Stef pulls away from Sascha’s neck to kiss him open-mouthed on the lips, teeth clashing, noses bumping, but Stef doesn’t care, he wants to melt into Sascha, wants their bodies to become one. He can hear Sasch spreading more oil over his cock.

“You ready, _kotik_?” Almost against Stef’s lips, they’re so close.

“Yeah. Yes. Ready, God, so ready.” He backs up and sinks down onto Sascha’s cock, and _fuck fuck fuck fuck_

“_Fuck fuck fuck fuck_,” out loud and in his head, hissed against the line of Sascha’s jaw. “Fuck, _malaka_, so full, I…”

“You’ve got a filthy mouth, hm?” Sascha whispers. “Begging for my cock. God, fuck, Stef, you’re so tight, _Jesus_.” He bucks his hips and Stef follows his lead and begins to move, backing up and down on his thick length. “I can’t take you. Can’t control myself around you. You’re so beautiful, Stef, so good.”

A litany of his own, and Stef closes his eyes, let it fill his ears, Sascha’s low, rough voice, ruined and strained by arousal. He bites his lip and tastes copper, feels his orgasm building in his belly. Rides him harder, faster, can’t do it fast enough,

“Sasch,” he says- yells, whispers, he can’t tell, doesn’t care. “I’m gonna-”

“Yeah, fuck, me too.”

“Sasch- Sascha-” he’s cut off by Sascha’s strangled cry and the feeling of Sascha spilling into him, of grabbing him round the waist to pull him in, sends him over the edge, and he’s spraying warm and wet over their stomachs, calling, chanting Sascha’s name, the pinnacle of pleasure blinding him. His mind empties for a split second. Paradise.

The last waves of it ripple through him and he buries his head back in the crook of Sascha’s shoulder, both of them out of breath, coated with a film of sweat.

“God,” Stef breaths.

“Blasphemy or prayer?”

“Yes.” Sascha snorts in response.

A long, comfortable silence, just the ticking of the clock.

“You know I love you, right?” Sascha’s voice is full of bluster but Stef can hear his fear.

“I do now.”

“And you…”

Stef sits up and brushes Sascha’s fringe away from where it has been plastered to his forehead.

“I love you.”

“Good.”

“Yeah, good.”

They smile, beatific.

“Merry Christmas, _liebling_.”

“Merry Christmas.”

Winter is kinder in Berlin, but Stefanos still misses Greece every time he gets out of his car and stands in a puddle of slushy snow, soaking himself up to the ankle. It’s dark in the morning, when he opens the shop, and he likes the idea that the window casts golden light onto the street outside, a beacon in the December morning. They should go back to Kos, for another holiday, soon.

1997 is drawing to a close. Stefanos spent all of yesterday pinning up posters in the window advertising their Christmas sale (the Men of Renaissance Art 1998 calendar only two marks with any purchase!). In January, he’ll get someone in to repaint the sign, touch it up a bit. _David and Jonathan_, in blue and gold, _Buchladlung_, bookshop, in smaller letters underneath. Stef is proud of the little haven he’s created. Johann, the guy from the council who Sascha spoke to so Stef could get the license in the first place, popped round the other day to show him a travel guide he’d picked up in London, which listed _David and Jonathan_, ‘the only gay bookshop in Berlin’ as one of the must-do items on an itinerary of Friedrichshain. Stef isn’t too proud to admit it put him in a good mood for the rest of the day.

There’s a noticeboard by the entrance, well-used by regulars- adverts for support groups, numbers of hotlines, local refuges- and it’s where Stef pins postcards of his favourite places. Vienna, Athens, Kos, Moscow. In the corner, faded but still visible, an old Polaroid of him and Sascha by the sign at the entrance to the village. _Their_ village. They haven’t been back in a long time. It might be a long time before they do. Stef misses it, sometimes. Only a little, though.

His final customer is always the same, always late, bursting through the door ten minutes after Stef should have closed. They’re both older, men, not boys, but Stef still gets that rush when he sees Sascha’s tall, bony frame and his blond curls.

“Evening,” he says. He leans over the counter to kiss Stef, who puts the book he was reading down and reaches out to take Sascha’s glasses. “They’re permanently steamed up,” Sascha remarks, and Stef just smiles, wipes them off on his t-shirt, and hands them back.

“How was school?”

“Good. They all said it was too cold to be playing basketball outside. I told them how we’d play hockey when it was minus fifteen when we were their age. Tough Russians, hm?”

“You never played hockey, you big wuss,” Stef says, “And you’re not Russian.”

“But other than that…”

“Yeah, other than that.” Sascha always has a story to tell him, about one of his pupils saying something funny or doing something stupid, getting himself locked in the kit cupboard, putting her shirt on back to front. “Herr Zverev,” he sometimes teases, and Sascha blushes. But Stef always has time to listen to him talk, fascinated by the quotidian drama of being a high school PE teacher.

“I’ll lock up,” Stef says. “And we’ll go home.”

“Home,” Sascha sighs, like he’s already there. “Heaven.”

_I love you_, Stef thinks, as Sascha wanders off to flick through a graphic novel or upset a table display. In a moment, he’ll say it aloud as he shuts the door of his bookshop behind them. For now, he just watches. Smiles. Waits.


End file.
